Coney Island's Mermaid Parade marches on after near-shutdown — see our photos

Coney Island's 44th annual Mermaid Parade rolled down Surf Avenue on Saturday, June 20, drawing more than 5,000 costumed marchers months after organizers warned that the nation's largest art parade might not happen at all.

The parade stepped off at 1 p.m. at West 21st Street and Surf Avenue, rolled east to West 10th Street and turned onto the Boardwalk, ending near the Parachute Jump at Steeplechase Plaza.

Turnout ran well above the roughly 3,000 marchers of a typical year.

Coney Island USA, the nonprofit that produces the parade, said in the spring that it faced an urgent financial crisis, citing rising costs, declining tourism, lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the cost of a long fight against a proposed casino development near the boardwalk.

A GoFundMe campaign launched in March raised $42,858 toward a $45,000 goal. Coney Island USA also received a $25,000 sponsorship from New York Comic Con, and Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso allocated $20,000 to close the remaining gap.

"The Mermaid Parade represents the most creative parts of Brooklyn. When I heard that the parade was in jeopardy, there was no question about stepping in to save it," Reynoso said in a statement.

Reynoso, who is also running for Congress, pledged to fund the parade $20,000 a year for the rest of his term as borough president. Artist Claire Valdez, currently serving as a state assemblywoman, is also running for the same seat.

Coney Island USA Artistic Director Adam Rinn called Reynoso "the true hero of this year's parade."

Musician Jesse Malin reigned as King Neptune and Grammy-winning songwriter Rickie Lee Jones as Queen Mermaid, joining a roster of past royalty that includes Lou Reed, David Byrne and Queen Latifah.

The parade has run on that artist-first energy since 1983, when performance artist and Yale School of Drama graduate Dick Zigun staged the first one through Coney Island USA, the nonprofit he founded to argue that Coney Island was culturally important, not just recreationally.

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Zigun built it as a summer-solstice rite with no ethnic, religious or commercial aim, paying homage to the Coney Island Mardi Gras parades that ran from 1903 to 1954 and borrowing from West African water festivals and Greek and Roman street revelry.

Costumes are meant to be handmade and free of corporate logos, and the judging rewards invention over beauty. A polished Ariel costume, by parade logic, wins nothing.

That ethos showed on the Boardwalk. A marcher in a towering cockroach costume worked the crowd with cascading red hair and a gold fan, a King Neptune figure passed in blue body paint and a starfish crown, and one reveler turned themselves into a pink sequined fish with a single googly eye, dancing in fishnets and combat boots.

Others leaned surreal, like a syringe headpiece above a sash reading "Saw 'Liquid Eyeliner!'", a marcher cradling a carton of eggs, giant inflatable sea creatures shoved along the planks.

The parade is also one of the city's most openly body-positive events, drawing marchers of every age and body type, many in elaborate costumes and many in very little at all. Partial nudity is a longtime fixture, and toplessness is legal in New York. And on the boardwalk, body paint and glitter have always passed for costume.

Political messaging is also often a fixture at the Mermaid Parade. This year, a climate contingent marched with homemade wind-turbine puppets and a sign reading "Offshore wind means good green jobs," and another marcher carried a sign reading "Mermaids and a free Palestine."

"They had universal 3K hell yeah," said one crowd member, eyeing a sign for the coveted program offering free preschool to 3-year-olds in New York City.

After the last marchers passed, organizers led King Neptune and Queen Mermaid to the water for the ceremony that opens the Atlantic to swimming for the summer.

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